It’s funny looking up the stats on how many of us don’t actually achieve our New Years’ Resolutions that we set for ourselves (this article says 80%!). In an effort to increase the likelihood of me achieving my resolutions last year, I actually wrote them down. I even did a mid-year check-in post to see how I was faring. Resolutions (i.e. goals) are more effective when they are measured so in an effort to give the final measurements, here is how I fared!

Grow Net Worth by 25% – ACHIEVED

At the time of setting this goal, I wasn’t sure how achievable this was, so I guess bravo for me on setting a stretch goal. We ended up growing our net worth by 27% for 2021 which I’m quite pleased with. Little things to help that we did throughout the year was: save 15% to purchase Employee Stock, save 15% for retirement, and simply put; own a house. Real estate values it seems everywhere just continued to rise in value. The stock market had a very good year in 2021 and I worked hard to minimize the cash I had on hand vs investing it in the market. I’m very happy with achieving this goal!

Focus more on Investments vs. Savings – ACHIEVED

I set this goal in 2021 as I felt like I had too much money in cash and not enough invested. I summed it up in my article this year, “why I’m focused on 8%” and I became very focused on making sure my money was working for me. Having it earn 0.4% in a ‘high-yield’ savings account mean my money was not working very hard for me. Inflation reared its ugly head in 2021 as we saw on average prices rise by 6%. Money in my savings account basically meant I was losing money!

I did a lot better saving less and investing more, trying to keep a low cash balance. At the beginning of the year my cash was sitting around 10%, and I got that down to about 5% by years end. However, one caveat that I didn’t penalize myself too hard is technically the proceeds from our rental house sale (completed in August) are mostly in cash. We did this because we are in the process of finding 2 new rental houses to buy, and felt like we were going to do that fairly quickly. Things ended up taking much longer (0 new rental houses as of now) so I’ve tried to get more aggressive in investing that money but it’s still mostly in cash as we expect to need that in the next few months. My rule of thumb is/was if you expect to need the money in <1 year, maybe don’t risk it in the stock market as with that short of a timeframe you might lose a little money but I’m low key rethinking that with 6% inflation.

Get more realistic with my budget – FAILED

In my mid-year post, I reported that I had made progress but still wasn’t where I hoped to be. I didn’t end up making much more progress than that and November/December ended up being very expensive months that felt like set us back. Looking back I really didn’t save for our next car purchase (a minivan!) like I wanted to, and outside of the 15% for retirement, we weren’t really investing extra money like we should.

As mentioned initially, I think this is a problem because I’m not realistic with my budget. I set too lofty of saving/investing goals for myself and inevitably real life (with all it’s expenses) gets in the way and I’d not save as much as I’d like. I hope at this point I’ve learned my lesson and will have a more realistic budget. Also getting a raise will hopefully help give us a little more breathing room!

Close or downgrade a few credit cards – ACHIEVED

Good thing my goal wasn’t not to open more credit cards, because that’s what I did with my new $695 credit card. I did however downgrade a $250/year card to a $0 card and a $69 card to a $39 card. Also at the end of the year I downgraded a $550 card to a $95 card so that’s also a big win there.

We’ll see what 2022 holds in terms of travel but I think I’m good in terms of the credit cards I have in my wallet right now. I’m on the fence on cancelling my $39 Southwest Credit card, on the one hand it’s on $39 so maybe I’ll keep it but on the other hand it’s $39 that I don’t need to be spending and my Chase Sapphire (now) Preferred allows me to transfer Chase points to Southwest.

Save for 529 – ACHIEVED

Who knows what college will look like or how much it’ll cost when BabyMoneyFinance and SegundoMoneyFinance are going to college (if they end up going) but I have a feeling it’ll still be expensive, so I’d like to save up for it. I set a goal of saving $4,000 each for them and achieved that goal in 2021!

Save up for winter in the summer – FAILED

I literally do this to myself every year. I know that November/December are going to be expensive months with lots of end of year HOA fees due, charitable donations, all the presents, likely travel and a variety of other fees or expenses that pop up. This past year I thought I was getting ahead of the curve by putting aside some cash to save up for the holidays. I actually ended up setting aside what proved to be enough for Christmas but it was daycare that got me. For whatever reason I reconcile my budget for daycare at the end of the year, as I pay weekly on a credit card (points on points) but then get $5,000 from money I set aside in a Dependent Care FSA. That FSA is awesome as it allows me to put that money aside tax-free. I know I’ll spend it on daycare so might as well use tax-free money for it. I ended up not putting as much money as I needed to aside, partially because I didn’t keep good tabs on how much it was costing each week or maybe partially because I didn’t want to think about how expensive it was!

So I guess I halfway fixed this issue by saving almost enough for Christmas but I failed at saving for daycare. This year I’ll do better and actually put a line item in the budget for daycare!

Keep doing more of the same and stay hungry – ACHIEVED

2021 was a hustle and grind but I’m proud of myself. I think growing my net worth 27% is quite the accomplishment that I’m happy with. Mrs. Money and I saw an investment payoff with our rental house and we’re hustling to find another one (or two). I grinded hard, putting aside 30% of my paycheck into ESPP and 401(k). All in all I’d say we did good doing more of the same good habits we’ve gotten into!

Summary

I didn’t achieve all my resolutions but achieved 5/7! That’s a passing grade for 2021! It was a fun exercise writing them down, tracking mid-year and closing out at year’s end!